Not This AGAIN!
by Iceblossom22
Summary: A rewrite of Miss WHoniverse's Not This Again. With permission, of course! A Zutara fanfic. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

Misa: Hey, guys!

Sasha: You may have read this before....

Misa: But we have the permission of the original author, Miss Whoniverse, to rewrite this story and publish it under our own names.

Sasha: Do we have to do the disclaimer?

Mike & Bryan: Yes!

Sasha: Where did you guys come from?

Mike: Thin air. Now hurry up and do the disclaimer!

Misa: You know what? Do it yourself!

Bryan: We do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender in any way. Boo hoo....

Mike: But we do!

Misa: To bad you admitted it....

Mike: Cheater!

Sasha: *rolls eyes* I couldn't possibly care less, but they own it and on with the show!

Flying high over thick trees, Aang hummed a song to himself while Sokka chewed a piece of grass and Katara draped herself boredly in Appa's saddle – if you could call it that. It was more like a small room. Glancing over at her brother, Katara was forcibly reminded of Jet, which irked her to no end.

It had been an extremely uneventful day, heading through the Earth Kingdom in search of an Firebending teacher for Aang. It wasn't as though they could just go to the Fire Nation and apply for classes, so they just had to fly and look and hope.

No fireballs hurled at them from below, no red fire balloons chased them from behind, no pouring rain hammered them from above. At first it had been a nice change not to have anything or anyone trying to kill you, but the three of them were somewhat shocked to realize that there was absolutely no fun or excitement to fill in the long hours of flight when there was no imminent threat of abduction or stranding.

Sitting up finally, Katara twisted, stretching her back.

"I never thought I'd say this," she yawned, "but I miss Zuko."

"I never thought I'd say this," Sokka replied, "but I agree."

"It _is _kinda boring without something to run from, huh?" beamed Aang over his shoulder, cheerfulness – as always – ready and willing. "But don't worry! I'm sure some kind of danger will show up next time we land! It always does." They lapsed into silence again.

"Ooh, guys, guess what!" said Katara abruptly after a few more minutes of silence, rummaging through her bags. "We're going to have to land before sundown and find some shops. We're out of meat!" She was thrilled at this turn of events, now they had an excuse to go into a town and probably run into trouble.

"WHAT!" cried Sokka, while Katara and Aang did happy dances in their seats. "NO! AANG – LAND!"

"Sokka, we have hours until the sun sets-" began Aang, laughing at Sokka's stricken expression.

"NO! AANG, WE'RE LANDING AT THE NEXT TOWN WE SEE, AND THAT IS FINAL!" Sokka lived in constant fear of going a day without any meat.

"Alright, alright, I'm pretty sure there's one up ahead somewhere, it's been ages since we last flew over civilization," said Katara, still smirking.

"Good! I'm starving!"

"Sokka, you haven't mentioned your stomach since before lunch – which, incidentally, was only about an hour ago."

"I wasn't hungry before!"

"So you just _suddenly _decided you were famished once I announced there was no meat?"

"That's the thing, isn't it," said Sokka testily. "If you don't want me to get hungry, DON'T TELL ME THERE'S NO FOOD!"

"We all want what we can't have!" called Aang cheerfully from the front, breaking up the argument before it started, just in case.

"Wrong. We just want meat."

The other two laughed at Sokka, and Katara lay back down. Sokka was still going on about which types of meat he was going to buy, and how he was _so _hungry, and after a few minutes of non-stop food talk, Momo sank his little teeth into Sokka's arm to keep him quiet.

Hours later, they were all getting a little worried.

"Is it just me," said Sokka in one of the rare moments of sane seriousness, "or has it been a strangely long time since we last found a town?"

"It's weird," said Katara quietly, leaning over Appa's side as far as she dared. "Night will fall soon. I mean, it's not like it matters that much; we have easily enough non-meat food to keep us going for days-" at this, Sokka groaned, "-but... it just doesn't seem right, does it?"

Aang stayed quiet, troubled eyes looking ahead for a spot to land. Appa had been flying all day and Aang could feel the rumbling of the bison's stomach.

"Well, it's back to nuts and berries, I guess," said Sokka moodily, not complaining too much for once because he was a little more worried about the lack of civilisation.

Momo seemed cheerful about the food idea, at least.

*********

Zuko was bored out of his mind. All day, there had been peaceful and uninterrupted sailing in the Earth Kingdom waters. Deprived of any recent leads, they were just sailing up the coast in the hopes of spotting the – rather unmistakeable – flying bison, but nothing had happened.

He'd reclined on his bed, had lunch, brooded around the decks, done a little Firebending, and was now back to pacing around his quarters with nothing to do. _I'm the Prince of the Fire Nation, and I'm bored. This is ridiculous._

*********

"I'm SO BORED," said Sokka as they sat around their little campfire. Katara made a non-committal noise that was probably agreement, and Aang just stretched restlessly. "You know what? I'm going to go hunting. We have no meat, and I NEED MEAT. I'm going to go get meat. Anyone wanna come help me get meat? So we can eat meat, because meat is good. And I _need_ meat. We all need meat, so I'm going to go get-"

"Just go already!"

"Fine, fine," he said defensively, voice comically high with his hands up. "Come on, boomerang, let's go get us some REAL food."

Momo, offended, let out a squawk-y noise and gathered his berries close.

Katara stood up too. "I need to find some water for the skins, and I don't need fresh water for that. We're pretty close to the coast; I'll come with you, Sokka."

"Great!" he said cheerfully. "Aang?"

"Nah, I'm going to stay here and brush Appa. He's starting to shed now because it's warmer than down south where we were before," said Aang, ever present grin on his face. "You two have fun! Don't run into Zuko!"

"We're in the middle of nowhere," giggled Katara. "If he happens to materialize nearby after no sign of him for days, he deserves to catch us."

Misa: Credit to MW!

Sasha: We love you.

Momo: *chirp* *chirp* *chirp*

Sasha: The lemur only wants to eat reviews for lunch. Satisfy the poor baby's belly...


	2. Chapter 2

Misa: Sorry for not updating sooner! I blame Internet disconnection!

The bay formed a distinct crescent, like the moon at its most curvy, and the sand was a pale whitish under the moonlight. The tree line stayed at a constant distance from the water, so it formed like a secondary crescent a little way behind them. The sand was very fine and dusty, still holding some residual warmth from the day that had already passed on.

Katara breathed in and out happily, the freezing cold air reminding her of home. She was in her element in every sense of the word, and it relaxed her immensely.

Sokka, however, was sitting with his arms around his knees, staring with a comically distressed expression into the bushes, willing something to appear that he could catch and eat. As Katara Waterbent to her heart's content, filling her waterskins and making 3D patterns absently with her toes, Sokka scanned the area.

"I can't believe we have no meat," he grumbled to himself for the thousandth time. "I can't believe there's nothing bigger than a bat on this island to hunt." Katara was barely listening; he'd been saying the same things over and over again for the past half an hour. "I can't belie- THERE'S SOMETHING!"

Without another word, he leaped to his feet and took off towards the edge of the beach, quickly disappearing into the edge of the trees. Katara span on her heel, starting after him with an annoyed shout, but her throat closed and she froze as she heard _him_ yell at _her_.

"KATARA, IT'S-" he started, but there was a muffled scuffle and a distinct thump, then his voice cut off.

For a long moment, nothing moved, as sometimes happens. It was one of those times where one second seems to stretch out into many and there is no sound, nothing moves, for what seems like longer than normal.

Then she shook her head and gritted her teeth, running backwards until the water was halfway up her shins. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, feeling the tide with a shiver. The ocean was her most powerful ally, and she knew nobody would be able to sneak up on her from behind her without the tides telling her there was a disturbance.

Satisfied that there was nothing out of the ordinary in the water or coming to ambush her from behind, she focused on the tree line. Eyes scanning around where Sokka had run into, she kept looking back to one patch of shadow in particular. There was nothing about it to set it apart from all the other patches of shadow around, but she couldn't stop looking back at it uneasily. Her eyes refused to be distracted, staring at that one point.

The corner of her eye noted a disturbance off to the right of that spot, but after a second's assessment, she smirked and turned back to the original spot.

"Throwing rocks to distract someone only works on idiots," she said quietly, knowing that her voice would carry through the still night to the shadows. "Why don't you come out?"

There was a moment of silence and she waited, still slightly crouched in her battle stance. There was a faint rustle, and she saw Sokka's assailant.

She wasn't at all surprised to be staring at Prince Zuko. He looked slightly smug, and seemed not to be thinking too much about the situation at hand, rather planning ahead to whatever his next move was going to be. _Provided he lives through this one_, thought Katara grimly.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" he said softly, still walking slowly towards her, hands raised in preparation of fire. He stopped a few meters from her, head cocked to one side. "You look like you're ready to _fight _me! That seems a little stupid. Why don't you just surrender now and save yourself the trouble?"

Katara raised one eyebrow, genuinely surprised at his lack of fear. Had he not looked around at the setting.

"No answer? Come on, I'm getting bored over here." His smirk was starting to get on her nerves. "Do you really think you can beat me?"

"Do you really think you can beat _me_?" she replied, raising the same eyebrow again. "What; seriously?"

"What are you talking about? I'm Fire Nation Royalty. I am being trained by the Great Dragon of the West. I'm one of the best Firebenders around. How can you possibly expect to beat me?" Zuko was in no particular rush to get the fight going. There was nowhere for the girl to run, and he was enjoying the chance to gloat.

"You really are thick, aren't you?" she said calmly, raising her hands and pulling two twin streams of water from the ocean lapping at her legs. "Not only am I standing in the ocean," she started, curling the water up into spheres while he heated up his hands and adopted a battle stance in anticipation, "but I am standing in the ocean in the middle of the night," she continued, making the spheres orbit her slowly while she pulled four thin strands out and attached two to each hand.

Zuko waited, knowing she wasn't going to attack until she had proved her point. "Not only am I standing in the ocean in the middle of the night," she continued, taking a leisurely step forwards, "I'm standing in the ocean in the middle of the night with a nearly-full moon rising right behind you."

Jerking, he whipped his head around, staring in dismay and the cool gray almost-orb hanging in the sky. Turning back slowly, he looked at her with something close to fear. _Close_ to fear. Not quite. It wasn't quite a _full _moon, so her powers couldn't be _that _much enhanced... right?

"And last, but not least, I've had some practice since last time I saw you," she smirked. He conjured up some fireballs in anticipation, tiring of the dialogue. "You're looking at Sifu Katara, Waterbending Master."

He almost turned tail and ran right then, but his pride held him still.

"Good luck," she finished sweetly, and before he could react – the water was upon him.

Aang was only slightly surprised when Katara walked into the camp, supporting a half-unconscious (or as the optimists say; half-conscious!) Sokka with her shoulders. He didn't even ask; he just raised an eyebrow.

"We have to fly away now, don't we?" he said rhetorically. Katara nodded anyway, and dropped Sokka. "Poor Appa."

"Yes, poor Appa," mumbled Sokka blurrily. "We wouldn't want to make him fly a little, huh? I mean, being assaulted and knocked unconscious and then having your sister freeze the Prince of the evil Fire Nation in a block of ice and heal you and shuffle away as fast as possible is a piece of cake, isn't it?"

"You guys always get into trouble," complained Aang, but he was laughing at Sokka's expression as he threw the stuff onto Appa. "Come on, get on."

"I can't use my legs yet," said Sokka matter-of-factly. Aang wasted no time with words and simply made the air carry him.

"Coming, Katara?" said Aang, holding out his hand from Appa's saddle.

"Yeah," she said, turning back to him and pulling herself into the saddle with his hand. "Let's go find where his ship is and freeze it in a block of ice as well!"

As they flew out towards the bay, they could see far below them a little red figure in Fire Nation garb steaming his way out of a huge ice pillar.

"Whoa," said Aang in amazement. "You've really outdone yourself this time, Katara, that pillar is taller than the trees!"

"Ah, the moon, Aang, the moon," she said in satisfaction. "Now where's that boat?"

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